It is often invoked as a metaphor for cumulative error, especially the inaccuracies as rumours or gossip spread,[1] or, more generally, for the unreliability of typical human recollection.

[8] Yunte Huang, a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has said that: "Indicating inaccurately transmitted information, the expression 'Chinese Whispers' carries with it a sense of paranoia caused by espionage, counterespionage, Red Scare, and other war games, real or imaginary, cold or hot.

[16] This North American name is followed in a number of languages where the game is known by the local language's equivalent of "broken telephone", such in Malaysia as telefon rosak, in Israel as "טלפון שבור" - literally meaning "broken telephone" in Hebrew ("telefon shavur"), in Finland as rikkinäinen puhelin, and in Greece as halasmeno tilefono (χαλασμένο τηλέφωνο) or spasmeno tilefono (σπασμένο τηλέφωνο).

[17] It can also be used to teach young children to moderate the volume of their voice,[18] and how to listen attentively;[19] in this case, a game is a success if the message is transmitted accurately with each child whispering rather than shouting.

It can also be used for older or adult learners of a foreign language, where the challenge of speaking comprehensibly, and understanding, is more difficult because of the low volume, and hence a greater mastery of the fine points of pronunciation is required.

Starting with "together we will make a world of difference", the phrase morphed into "we're setting a record" part way down the chain, and by the end had become simply "haaaaa".

[21][22] In 2017 a new world record was set for the largest game of Telephone in terms of the number of participants by schoolchildren in Tauranga, New Zealand.

Beginning in St Kilda Library in Melbourne, Australia, the starting phrase "Life must be lived as play" (a paraphrase of Plato) had become "He bites snails" by the time the game reached its end in Alaska 26 hours later.

[citation needed] The pen-and-paper game Telephone Pictionary (also known as Eat Poop You Cat[28]) is played by alternately writing and illustrating captions, the paper being folded so that each player can only see the previous participant's contribution.

[30] Following the success of Broken Picture Telephone,[31] commercial boardgame versions Telestrations[28] and Cranium Scribblish were released two years later in 2009.

A translation relay is a variant in which the first player produces a text in a given language, together with a basic guide to understanding, which includes a lexicon, an interlinear gloss, possibly a list of grammatical morphemes, comments on the meaning of difficult words, etc.

The CBBC game show Copycats featured several rounds played in a Telephone format, in which each player on a team in turn had to interpret and recreate the mimed actions, drawing or music performed by the preceding person in line, with the points value awarded based on how far down the line the correct starting prompt had travelled before mutating into something else.

[citation needed] The game of Telephone is used in a number of fields as a metaphor for imperfect data transmission over multiple iterations.

[32] For example the British zoologist Mark Ridley in his book Mendel's demon used the game as an analogy for the imperfect transmission of genetic information across multiple generations.